Eden Hill Journal

Comments, dreams, stories, and rantings from a middle-aged native of Maine living on a shoestring and a prayer in the woods of Maine. My portion of the family farm is to be known as Eden Hill Farm just because I want to call it that and because that's the closest thing to the truth that I could come up with. If you enjoy what I write, email me or make a comment. If you enjoy Eden Hill, come visit.

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Space Fudge

My mother used to make the best ever chocolate fudge. Probably half the fudge she made had walnuts in it and that was just as incredible as the straight chocolate fudge. She only made fudge for Christmas but her success depended on the weather so she made it when the weather was good, like summer maybe. I don't remember her recipe and I've not had fudge as good as hers ever since so I suppose it's a lost art but I do recall getting every last scrid of fudge from her pan and from that old slotted spoon that she wore out over the years by stirring hot fudge in the pan as it cooled. There wouldn't be even a stain of chocolate brown left on the spoon and not much more left in the pan. After all, it was a long wait till Christmas!

But I digress. The title of this post is Space Fudge, not Mom's Fudge.

I was just watching a YouTube video titled How the Universe is Way Bigger Than You Think and came across this scientific theory that the video refers to as the Theory of Cosmic Inflation which comes up in the discussion about ten and a half minutes into the video.

In the past year or so it has come to my attention that just the part of the universe that we have been able to see with our most refined telescopes stretches something like 45 billion light years in any direction we look which if you stop and think about it is quite amazing considering that the Big Bang happened something like 13 billion years ago. So in other words in those 13 billion years the matter and energy out there on the fringes of our observable universe didn't just move from the center of the "Bang" 45 billion light years out but after that, the light from those stars traveled 45 billion light years over to us on earth, and all in just 13 billion years of time. And that's just the observable part of the universe. The whole thing is said to be much larger. Don't believe me? Watch the video.

This Theory of Cosmic Inflation solves that problem in far less time than the blink of an eye it's so powerful! Plus it solves other similar major problems with the Big Bang Theory.

But the thing is, it seems to be a bit difficult to explain the theory in common language. For one thing there's a hypothetical field involved called the inflaton according to Wikipedia. That term doesn't just fail my spell checker, I would say it dabbles in the heretical "ether".

In the same paragraph Wikipedia says, "The detailed particle physics mechanism responsible for inflation is not known." I might paraphrase that as saying scientists don't have a clue how this magical event could have happened. Not surprising if you ask me. My mom's fudge was real. You could put it in your mouth and taste it and feel it melt and it was all good. This Space Fudge leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm old enough now to remember a time when "The Big Bang" was just a theory. It wasn't accepted as proof of anything, just a theory to explain red shift when looking at distant objects in space.

I'm thinking there's been a lot of money spent on the attempt to convince the people of the world that all of existence began spontaneously with an enormous explosion estimated to have taken place around 13 billion years ago. There was a time back when I was younger and this was just a theory when a lot of people believed that the Big Bang Theory explained creation without the need for a divine creator. So huge sums of money were poured into the attempt to establish the Big Bang as a reality in the minds of the world's population. No need for God. It all began with a big bang.

Enormous numbers of professionals have owed and still owe their careers and their positions in life, financial and otherwise, to the money invested in the Big Bang Theory consensus. In other words, from a professional perspective there's a lot at stake here, a lot to lose if the theory fails. So there's obviously a need for pressure to sustain the theory.

But when the brightest minds on the planet can't do any better than they do fudging explanations for why the impossible is easily possible if you only believe more new theory, well that's where the boat gets a bit too tippy for me.

There are times when I think science like this is just one big Ponzi scheme. The more people you can get on board the scheme the more money there is to be had. And then it all comes tumbling down. The only difference is in a real Ponzi scheme the people responsible for it are supposed to go to jail.

Thursday, April 19, 2018

Confused

I seem to be getting a wee bit confused these days pertaining to that no-man's land called Syria. How did Syria manage to become the world's most despised nation anyway? But that's not what confuses me. What confuses me is the way the United Nations hasn't seemed to be able to locate any chemical weapons facilities in Syria when at the exact same frame of time the United States military can pinpoint their locations precisely for surgically accurate missile strikes. What, do Americans only speak English and nobody in the entire United Nations understands English? What gives?

And why hasn't anybody in the media or on the Internet asked that painfully obvious question?

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Paradigm

Here is how the situation in Syria looks when you completely eliminate from your conscious mind the fact that there are covert operations attempting to overthrow the Syrian government and kick Russia out.

For those of you with short memories, Russia warned the United States before 9/11 of the pending threat and the United States ignored the warning.

It kills my faith in humanity when the world is willing to risk nuclear war just to overthrow another Middle East nation and the people of the world refuse to see the other side of the paradigm. Zionism isn't worth nuclear war. Wake up world! The Plan for the New American Century is wrong.

Sunday, April 08, 2018

Dental Floss

FatBoy Gets New Shoes

My FatBoy bicycle got some new shoes this past week. His original tires were Specialized Ground Control 26X4.6 inches. I've been wanting to put on some road tires for summer riding so I bought a pair of Origin 8 Supercell 26X4.0 inches. It's been too cold for me to want to ride but I've tried it out and the new tires have not only made the bike easier to pedal, they've made it safer because the bike is so much quieter on pavement. I rode it on light snow this morning and there was no problem until I slipped on the side of a frozen rut. But bring on Summer. FatBoy and I are ready!

Oh and I got new shoes too recently. I have feet that are hard to fit even with size 13. The pads beside my big toes rub on most shoes I try on. But I was on my way to the dentist when I realized I hadn't brought along my boating shoes. I had on my old stinky Sorel felt lines. So I stopped in Guilford and wound up wearing a new pair of walking shoes that look just like running shoes. Go figure. I'll fit FatBoy's toe clips for these riding shoes.

I've been camera shopping online for the past few weeks. I actually ordered a Canon EOS 80D with the Video Creator Kit and an extra lens but the order was cancelled for some reason so I never did get that. Now I've narrowed it down to something like two or three cameras and some Sony camcorders. The Canon camcorder that interests me costs too much. But there are three Sony camcorders that are of interest. There's the 405, the 53, and the 700. But today I am sold on the Canon G5 mirrorless camera. It may not be the best video camera but it seems to be a good video camera. It even seemed to have good in-camera sound. Plus it has awesome manual controls and it takes really prizewinning photos, a Canon characteristic that I've noticed before. Sony just doesn't have that look. But I do like the size and features of the Sony 405 and the somewhat larger but still compact 53. I am amazed by the image stabilization in video with those Sony camcorders. I have learned that Sony builds the image sensors for a lot of the current consumer cameras.
So what's so special about the Canon G5, I don't know. But I do like it a lot this particular day in time.

Speaking of days in time, we have been spending our days recently in extended winter. Our nights have been well below the freezing point, ten or more below Celcius, which translates to around thirteen degrees. 11 one morning... April started eight days ago.
The good news is that by mid-week this week we should be back into maple sapping weather. I was looking at world temperatures on the windy dot com website and we are being skimmed by a significant amount of cold air trapped up north. The rest of the world is HOT!

Come to Maine for the bouquet of fresh spring snow but wait maybe another week or two.

Thursday, April 05, 2018

War on Truth

From my perspective, and mind you this is just one man's opinion, but I don't think I'm alone here, this is the pot calling the kettle black.

I still remember waking up late one evening and my radio was tuned to Public Radio and this was during the days leading up to the 2016 election and there was this woman speaking and she was talking about how normal and necessary lying is. Mind you that's just one man's memory but just the same, that was essentially the message and this woman meant what she was saying and it was not very long before that radio station's audience was expected to vote for Hillary and not for the Donald.

Sorry, Hillary. Maybe this covers your tracks for some Americans, but not for me.